I was born Arabella Alis Egan, Princess of the Fae Realm. Daughter of the mad fae queen who ruled on the seat of death.
Royalty in one of the largest, cruelest realms in the universe. Billions strong.
The fae manifested abilities at a young age over fire, earth, water, or air.
But I manifested nothing.
At sixteen years old, all elite youths took the fae standardized tests. I tested average on all sections except one.
I scored first out of thirty-three million in battle strategizing.
It wasn’t a good thing.
With no fae abilities, and a mad queen as my mother, I was prime breeding stock. I had virginity, obedience, a propensity for strategy, piety to the sun god, and above all else, royalty. At least, that was what Mother said to the buyers.
But she set me aflame each night.
Mother hoped to awaken a single ounce of power in my bones—but nothing ever came. She burned my body with her power that never left any marks.
It wasn’t just to strengthen me, she had an unholy rage, especially when it came to controlling people.
I’d always aspired to run, hunt, and learn. Never to breed. But with no powers and an honorable test score, Mother made arrangements.
And she punished me for my insolence.
A few weeks after the tests, I disguised myself as a boy with an enchanted ring and fled from the sunny realm via a hidden portal into the frigid shifter realm.
In the new realm, a man in a cloak, with bright-blue eyes, had me tested and proclaimed me a beta shifter.
I didn’t know why he lied.
Or who he was.
At a fortress in the shifter realm, posing as a beta male, I fought off arachnid monsters that infiltrated the shifter realm by portal. I lost myself in combat training and war.
I’d never been so happy.
At twenty-four, after making a life for myself in the desolate, wintery land, I met my best friend, Sadie. A scrawny alpha female who was covered in scars, with a terrifying tiger form.
We bonded over our mutual experiences with self-deprecating humor, war, and pain.
Mostly pain.
Sadie clashed with her three alpha warrior roommates: Ascher, Jax, and Cobra. But we read stories and hung out. She was my first true friend.
My first best friend.
The good times ended.
At a celebration of the new year, a kitten I’d found turned out to be an omega shifter—Xerxes, my mother’s right-hand assassin. Working alongside Ascher, another spy, he kidnapped Sadie, Jax, and Cobra into the fae realm.
They didn’t go alone.
Ascher grabbed me from the party because he recognized the bright blue of my eyes and short hair. So similar to the mad queen’s coloring.
Mother was not happy to see me.
The enchanted ring was ripped off my finger, and Arabella, the pretty princess, was back.
Mother strapped a crystal collar around my neck, for reasons still unclear. And the queen wove a story that I was kidnapped and that it was a blessing to have me returned to the fae realm.
Each night, she set me on fire while her face blistered with rage.
Sadie, alongside Jax, Cobra, and Ascher, was forced to compete in the gladiator games. Forced to put on a show for a million bloodthirsty fae.
Mother tortured me in private.
I smiled in public.
The realm was grateful to have its pretty princess back. Relief was tangible, and breeding offers poured in.
But when I was alone with Sadie, a deep male voice took over her doctor’s body and read a bloodthirsty poem to us in an ancient language only taught to fae royals. It sounded like a prophecy.
A nasty one.
We ignored it as best as we could. As one has a tendency to do with the unexplained.
Then one night, Sadie and I decided to lose our virginity at a fae sex clinic.
It was a rebellion.
A failed one.
The three half warriors, Demetre, Noah, and Shane, were some of the strongest men in the realm. Since a young age, I was forced to attend the gladiator games, and I’d befriended them. Helped heal them and begged my mother not to hurt them.
But her punishments became unbearable, and I stopped speaking up.
The half warriors’ friendship turned to hatred.
It didn’t help that over the years, I’d grown to look like my mother. Same unique turquoise hair and bright-blue eyes.
To the half warriors, I was just another spoiled fae royal who lived to torture those beneath them.
Mud beneath their boots.
Their hatred didn’t lessen in the eight years I was away in the shifter realm.
It grew.
As a result, that night at the sex clinic, three half warriors followed me and brought me to my mother before I could lose my virginity.
Served me up to the queen.
Laughed in Mother’s face and taunted her that her pious daughter was a common whore. What elite fae would want to breed with such scum?
That night, Mother didn’t just light me on fire.
She beat me.
Then she took out an enchanted knife.
Inspired by the horrible scars on Sadie’s flesh, she’d commissioned a blade that would never create a scar, just leave a gaping, festering wound.
A wound that would burn whenever a person became the slightest bit aroused, that would itch unbearably at all times. Torture.
Mother was creative.
She carved “WHORE” into my back.
And once again, Arabella Alis Egan was powerless at her mother’s nonexistent mercy.
Unable to escape my fate, unable to be anything other than a pawn in a cruel, sunny realm.
I told no one.
A few days later, under the dual suns of the realm, Mother made a deal with the most ancient vampyre in all the realm—Lothaire. He was rumored to rule Elite Academy, one of the most terrifying and prestigious schools in the universe.
It was a plot.
Lothaire would taste gladiators’ blood and decide if they were worthy, but he’d been paid off by the queen to kill Sadie and her three alphas. She knew from the half warriors that Sadie had gone to the sex clinic with me.
Mother had no tolerance for dissidence.
After all, she’d ruled from the seat of death for centuries.
She wasn’t weak.
But on the sands of the gladiator ring, Sadie fell to her knees and flung her blood hundreds of yards into my mother.
Infected her with pure power and took over her will, hurtling through her defenses, until the queen was paralyzed and weak.
Sadie was a blood fae and a half-breed.
But history said that only males could be half-breeds, never a female.
Not only that, but Sadie was of a long-lost race of fae that had gone extinct, rumored to be distant relatives of vampyres. With her newfound power, Sadie ordered the queen to release the collar around my neck.
What happened next was fate.
Cruel, twisted, delicious prophecy.
I embraced my destiny.
The churning darkness in my soul blinded my vision and the slur burned on my back. Ice daggers, sharper than any blade in the universe, erupted from my fingers. I attacked.
I slammed my daggers through my mother’s chest.
Broke her sternum, ripped out her beating heart, and consumed it. While an unknown man’s voice praised me.
It was the only way to kill a fae monarch.
The only way to succeed to the seat of death.
Eat a royal beating heart.
But it was retribution, an act born of pure rage with no forethought. I didn’t want to be queen, had no aspiration to rule over a land and people that I hated.
The other problem—no fae had ever manifested ice claws. I’d learned our histories three times over.
Arabella Alis Egan was now the rightful queen.
Of an awful realm.
I didn’t want it. I found my old ring in my dead mother’s room.
Disguised myself back into a boy.
Glamoured to appear as a man with short hair and a wide chest. It could only work with what was present, so the only thing the enchantment couldn’t glamour was my vagina, but that was easily hidden.
And I fled.
We all ran.
That was how I found myself in the beast realm, with its glittering skyscrapers and terrifying Mafia. In a realm where shifters lived in packs. A land ruled by enchanted guns that were banned in the fae realm because they killed shifters and fae alike.
We’d escaped.
Cobra was revealed to be the son of the don who ruled the city. Cobra was a prince.
We all lived at Xerxes’s mansion as Sadie and the men competed in the Mafia trials. I stayed at home disguised as a boy with her sister and Jax’s three sisters. Four teenage girls, all varying degrees of annoying but still entertaining.
Not enough to make me forget.
That I was a fugitive.
That I had no future.
That my back burned unmercifully.
That I’d done the unthinkable to my mother.
With glittering technology, I acquired a long pipe full of numbing drugs that was enchanted to never run out. The drugs were the only thing that kept me sane. Ascher also got me a pinky-length pipe of the drugs. I smoked whenever I could.
I sank lower.
Then one day, I took off the enchanted toe ring I’d worn since birth. A gift from my mother.
My fae ears disappeared, and my pin-straight blue hair became a mass of wild curls.
She’d purposefully disguised me.
But I still had my mother’s coloring and shared her dainty features. If I wasn’t a fae, then how was the fae queen my mother?
The slur on my back burned unmercifully, and I showed it to Sadie.
Then flyers were sent out in the beast realm from the High Court.
A secret group that ruled over all the realms.
The papers read that someone had kidnapped the rightful fae queen, and they would kill anyone associated with my capture. It also described Sadie as a half-breed female with scars. She was a suspect in my disappearance.
The fae realm couldn’t move forward with succession because they were in stasis until I was found.
Dead or alive.
The drawing on the flyer was of a beautiful woman, but I was disguised as a boy.
Another poem read itself to Sadie and me.
We ignored it.
Sadie left to complete her third Mafia trial.
Shifters looking for leverage against Sadie and her men sprayed the house with machine guns, shooting Walter—the butler—and myself over a hundred times with deadly enchanted bullets.
All so they could steal the girls.
Those men died.
The girls returned safely.
Walter lay dead in the foyer.
I lived.
Against all odds.
Covered in bullet wounds, yet somehow still alive, I attended the Equinox Ball with Sadie.
But the beast realm was a cruel place.
Two shifters sliced off Sadie’s finger that wore the enchanted ring I’d gifted her that covered her scars. They called the High Court, expecting to be rewarded for turning over the scarred half-breed girl.
A man with wings, and the cloaked man with the bright-blue eyes who’d helped me escape the fae realm at sixteen, arrived in a flash of smoke. The winged man spoke to Sadie and handed her a small circle. She never said what they spoke of.
Then they left.
The shifters who’d removed her finger were still alive.
Swirling rage overwhelmed me, the same darkness that prompted me to act without thought.
To eliminate.
I threw two ice daggers at them, and the shifters shattered into a billion pieces and misted away.
Like they’d never existed.
But it wasn’t a tragedy.
Sadie’s men proclaimed their loyalty and asked her to be their packmate. They bonded in a public display, proclaimed her theirs, and unknowingly passed their third trial. It had been the test all along—a loyalty test.
The don initiated all five of them. Sadie got her men and the security of a prestigious job, and the girls went to school.
A happily ever after for everyone.
Except one.
A few weeks later, the doorbell rang at midnight, and I answered it.
Once again, everything changed.
And not for the better.
